GesherEU’s Annual Weekend Away 2024

When GesherEU members got together for our annual retreat, earlier this month, it was an weekend to remember.  The event saw 44 adults and children spend three nights in a converted old pub in the Peak District, from 9th to 12th February.  Highlights included long hikes through the surrounding countryside, where remnants of snowfall were […]

Following in her Footsteps

Chavie Weisberger is the Director of Community Engagement at Footsteps, GesherEU’s American sister organisation. We spoke to her about her life, her role and what our organisations can learn from each other. When Chavie Weisberger came over to the UK to visit GesherEU in the summer of 2023, she hoped to find fresh energy and […]

Learning Times Tables at 23

When people come to GesherEU, they often have very little secular education. We find out how the charity and its partners help members to achieve their potential. Most children in the UK learn their times tables when they are seven. But GesherEU member Pini, now 23, has only just learned them. That’s because, like many […]

Day of Choice 2023

The international Day of Choice is an annual event, which takes place every 27th October, to raise awareness of the issues facing people who leave ultra-Orthodox communities across the world.  GesherEU is part of a global movement for change. Together with our sister organisations in the US, Europe, Israel and Australia, we want to ensure […]

Q&A with Vicky Jones

Vicky Jones has been GesherEU’s Welfare Officer since October 2022. We asked her to tell us more about herself and what she does. Tell us about yourself and what you did before you came to GesherEU I live in East London, with my partner, my stepson and my cat. I grew up in Bournemouth, a […]

How I Escaped from a Golden Prison

Moishy* name changed* is 28. He left the Hasidic community three years ago. “Growing up in Stamford Hill, I used to see non-Jews walking through, in their jeans and t-shirts, or riding on their bicycles by the River Lea. For me, they represented something grounded and real – something I was very attracted to. My […]

“It’s always worse than you realised” – Review of Unorthodox

My perspective is as a woman who grew up and lived in a similar Chasidic community for the first forty years of my life, who was driven out of the community for going against their rules, and whose relationship with my five children was destroyed as a result. I thought the Netflix series Unorthodox was […]

Review of Netflix Mini Series – Unorthodox

“אונז האבען אלע אונזערע לאגיג’עס” “Unz hobben alle unzere luggages” (we have all of our luggage) (Yanky on the phone with his mother from the Berlin airport).   Well, you don’t get more authentic than that. The mix of Yiddish and English, the projection of Yiddish rules on an English word (luggage), all seasoned with […]

Tonight I had an unusual experience …

Tonight I had an unusual experience. I went to the theatre to watch Fiddler on the Roof. For me going to the theatre is not unusual. I have been to the theatre before. I have been OTD for over 7 years now – going to the West End and enjoying a night out is not […]